I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the Upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they to-day? Are they annihilated, body and soul--as dead as stones on the beach? Or do their spirits wander wearily in profundis bowed under the burden of new sorrows, awful and unknown?
Yes. I thought of myself. Except grannie, who was fifty years my senior, who has ever loved me dearly, whom have I ever dearly loved? No one. Not even Alice, though we have been good chums.
I resolved on Thursday never again to think the thoughts I thought before the glass. But thoughts will not be denied. In the churchyard this morning, as I sprang up and paced among the graves, a hot, vast, rebellious anger nearly drove me mad. To-day I knew that I was made for love--for a love immense as the sea, ever-lasting as the hills, more splendid than the sun. Why has it been written that love must pass me by?
So I did not say a De Profundis. I know that God exists; but the depths seemed too deep for him to pity and the heights too high for him to hear. I clanged the churchyard gate behind me harshly; and it was in vain that the jet-black letters on the snow-white plank of the new grave whispered: "If you please."
Monday, 2.45 p.m.
Susan is behaving strangely, and I don't like it.
There is a letter from Ruddington. When it arrived, Susan made no secret of it; but she has neither shown it to me nor mentioned it, although she has been with me all the morning.
In one sense I grant that it is Susan's letter, not mine, and that she is under no obligation to let me read a line. But, in another sense, it is as much mine as hers. The letters Ruddington writes are answers to my letters, not Susan's. The Susan he thinks about and writes to is no longer the palpable Susan with whom he fell in love at Traxelby. He has a new Susan, a composite Susan, a Susan who never was and never will be, a Susan idealized as much from my letters as from his recollections of her face. If Susan, at last, feels competent to compose and write her replies, well and good. But she should say so. To take back the whole affair into her own hands without a word is rather cool. Not that I care one jot about what Ruddington has written. But I do feel rather sick about Susan's uncouthness. After the pains I've taken, it is so monstrously ungrateful.
Bed-time.
Susan drifted down the garden path about three o'clock, and came to anchor beside my chair. She began turning up the gravel with her toe.